Karma

[ailbhe]

I had another flashback last night - this time to contractions. The relentless, hard, 30-120 second contractions I had for a month before Linnea was born. The ones I was told were Braxton Hicks until someone actually felt one and expressed considerable surprise that I could still talk. My abdomen would get so hard I couldn't make an impression with my fingers, and I couldn't walk or breathe - but because I could still talk, the medics were led astray. Oopsie.

I spent a while the day before - interestingly, before I read Radegund's birth story - remembering how I'd asked the midwives, somewhere after daylight on Friday but before the last midwife to deal with my labour came on shift, if I was going to hate my baby. I remember being very worried that, if the baby existed at all, which I sincerely doubted at that time, I would resent the 30 hours of hard labour I'd been through at that point.

I don't know how I got through that month, the 38 hours of labour, the 21 minutes of serious in-theatre melee, the three days afterwards when I couldn't walk unaided. I don't know. I'm sitting here, having done it, and I can't imagine how. I think it must be as I said three months ago - I just didn't die, over and over again. And the flashbacks and panic attacks are coming back, and bringing hot rage with them, over and over again.

Someone said to me, on a mailing list, recently, "It's about time you had some good luck, after all that."

I answered, "She's asleep upstairs."

She's asleep again now. She knows how to kick a ball from her door-bouncer. She can almost sit up. She can roll over both ways, and crawl backwards or in 360 degree circles with her tum as the mid-point (what's the technical term for the middle of a circle? epicentre?).

She tries to feed herself with the spoon when she's being given her two teaspoons a day of mashed squish. When she's hungry and placed in a nursing position, she pants like an eager puppy until she can grab me in both hands and eat. She has two teeth, but she only bites when not feeding. Her left lower front tooth is a little crooked; the right one appears straight.

She has some more consonants - goo, buh, tha. She likes to blow raspberries to express pleasure or what sounds like irritated swearing. She sings when I sing, sometimes, and beats her hands in time to music. She loves to watch me dance, particularly "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" which will, no doubt, be very good for my abs. Sometimes, when she's eating, she pulls away and looks at me; it looks like awe, though it can't really be awe. Perhaps it's love. Maybe that's what knowing where your next meal is coming from looks like. I don't know; it makes me sure and certain that it's all worth it, ten times worth it, forever worth it, if I get to keep her strong and safe and happy.

Comments

[ailbhe]

OK.

Thanks for this. I appreciate such a reasoned response after my friends and neighbours have unanimously leapt to my defense with big pointy teef.

It's still likely that you will turn into an obsessed baby maniac for a while, at least, because hormones do that to a person - but even though she is the most important thing in my life, and has altered my life more than most babies manage, I still have time to read, do little artistic things, keep house, socialise quite a lot, swim, walk, and so on. I am the only mother I know personally who has neither returned to work nor planned to return to work.

Wanting strongly to have babies isn't unusual generally (I happen to also know a lot of people who definitely don't want babies, but that's a side-effect of my being slightly outside mainstream culture), but it is something at least some women conceal. I have, myself, been told "You're too intelligent to waste your life having children," more than once. I didn't tell anyone - not even my mother, to whom I tell almost everything - that I was trying for a baby. The only people who knew were Rob, me and our best friend. I'm 25. These days, that's too young to want to start a family, in my circles.

What happened to me is far, far below a 1% chance, which also increases your chances of not becoming an obsessive bore. But the obsessing is hella enjoyable.